There were several fairly minor earthquakes Sunday afternoon inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The largest was a magnitude 5.0 earthquake around 4:36 p.m. The quake was around 4 miles north-northeast of Ka’ena Point, around 28 miles south of Hilo. The United States Geological Survey reports the quake was around 5 miles deep.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake occurred at 4:36 p.m. about 4 miles north-northeast of Kaena Point or about 26 miles south of Hilo and 11 miles from Volcano. The quake was inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park around 4 miles from Pu’u ‘O’o Crater.
.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center reported that no tsunami was expected.
Minor earthquakes are a common occurrence on Hawaii’s Big Island. The United States Geological Survey’s “Felt Earthquakes in Hawaii” at http://tux.wr.usgs.gov says there have been 50 earthquakes in the last two weeks on the island–a fairly standard rate of earthquakes, most of which are not even felt.
Sunday’s biggest earthquake was widely felt. The USGS “Did you feel it?” Web site (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/) received 600 felt reports within two hours of the earthquake.
The magnitude-4.7 earthquake was followed by 20 aftershocks in two hours in the same area, the largest of which was magnitude-3.1.
The Holei Pali area of Kilauea’s south flank has been the site of 16 earthquakes of magnitude-4.5 or greater during the past 50 years, with 8 since 1983. Most are caused by abrupt motion of the volcano’s south flank moving southeast over the ocean crust at an average rate of 6.5 centimeters per year (2.6 inches per year) as a result of magma injected into the rift zone.
The earthquakes caused two small collapses of the West Ka‘ili‘ili lava delta that has been inactive since late December 2011. There were no other effects apparent on Kilauea’s ongoing eruptions or on Mauna Loa. HVO monitoring networks have not detected any significant changes in activity at the summits or rift zones of the volcanoes.
For eruption updates and information on recent earthquakes in Hawai‘i, visit the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory website at http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov.
